The present disclosure relates generally to systems and methods for providing virtual co-location and, more specifically, to systems and methods for virtual co-location for facilitating collaboration between a local user in a room and a remote user outside the room, including for example, an Internet Of Things (IOT) device and a remote computer.
It is often the case that the best collaboration among teams occurs when all team members are in the same “pod” or room at the same time. However, in today's workplace environment, it is not unusual to have some people working remotely at any given time. Working remotely includes working from any location other than a shared space conducive to face-to-face meetings, including working from home and working at another company facility.
Many attempts have been made to use telecommunications technology to overcome the impact on collaboration of working remotely. However, even in today's digital workplace, collaborating team members physically located outside of a central location, such as a main office, still do not fully enjoy the benefits of in-person collaboration. While diverse physical locations may be convenient or even necessary, collaboration efforts as a whole often suffer. For example, many aspects of spontaneous collaboration are lost when collaborating workers are in different physical locations. When spontaneous collaboration does occur, there is no easy way for a remote worker to jump into that discussion. Even if a teleconference is hastily arranged, remote workers often cannot communicate non-verbally and the remote worker(s) may not even know who is in the room or participating.